Millions of people across South Asia, including entire families, are forced to leave their homes and communities to seek work as migrant labourers, largely due to the increased pressures that poverty, a lack of sustainable livelihoods, and climate change have on local opportunities.
Migrant workers often travel huge distances to find daily wage work in sectors such as agriculture, construction, and domestic work, as this kind of insecure work is often the only choice available to them. This desperation for work leaves them vulnerable to manipulation, exploitation and abuse from traffickers and opportunists. Lack of access to educational resources, combined with low literacy rates, means that many migrant workers struggle to access the rights and benefits that might protect them.
In this blog post, we’ll discuss the challenges faced by migrant workers across South Asia, including the ways in which women migrant workers are especially vulnerable to exploitation. We’ll also cover some examples of the working and living conditions of migrant workers and unpack the ways that Karuna and our projects in South Asia are supporting migrant workers to find safe, sustainable livelihoods and become free from exploitation and abuse.
Understanding the Reasons Behind The Exploitation of Migrant Workers
There are many reasons why people consider leaving their homes and travelling long distances in search of work, with poverty and lack of opportunity as central driving factors.
In India alone, socio-economic distress compels 140-200 million people to migrate each year, with the promise of paid work at the end of their journey.
Across South Asia, especially in rural areas, poverty is a constant threat to the lives of families trying to feed themselves and survive day to day. Combined with limited opportunities for well-paid work in their local areas and poor access to education, many people are forced to look further afield for employment.
In many cases, the effects of climate change also drive people from their homes, with entire communities uprooted due to flooding, drought, and damage to their properties. Sometimes, people’s entire homes or villages are lost due to climate change. As a result, people are forced to migrate long distances in search of safety and better opportunities elsewhere.
The typical profile of a migrant worker in South Asia is a person aged between 18 and 35 who doesn’t own land or livestock and has limited education or vocational skills. They’re often from excluded parts of society, living in poor, rural areas with limited access to well-paid employment.
Through the work we do with our partners, we have a good understanding of how many migrant workers are persuaded to take jobs far from their homes. In many cases, contractors arrive in rural villages and offer attractive-sounding work to people in search of employment, promising higher wages with the assurance of food and accommodation thrown in. They’re even told they can bring their entire families with them, too. These contractors are often very friendly and persuasive, promising the potential migrant workers that the work is safe and their lives will improve if they leave their homes and take the work. Unfortunately, these contractors are often found to be lying, misrepresenting the work they’re promising and persuading migrant labourers into a dangerous situation they will become trapped in, usually by forcing them to sign legal papers that bind them into the work.
The Working and Living Conditions of Migrant Workers
Many migrant workers lack knowledge about their rights and what government welfare schemes are available to them, leaving them open to exploitation and forced labour. In many cases, they believe the contractor and travel from their homes, often with their entire families, to begin working.
Often travelling thousands of kilometres and sometimes crossing international borders, thereby forfeiting their rights as citizens, migrant workers are at risk of exploitation, not knowing for certain what awaits them. When they arrive and begin work, they find that the working and living conditions are very poor, often without proper access to food, water or decent accommodation. Many migrant workers also find that they are often not paid fairly or, sometimes, at all. They are often guarded to prevent them from leaving and are abused when they do try to escape, ending up in the trap of forced labour and debt.
The life of a migrant worker is hard. They’re often forced to work long hours doing manual labour, either in agriculture, working in hot weather in fields, or in construction. As well as the strenuous physical work, the accommodation provided is typically poor, often without even any buildings, leaving them to sleep on the ground without shelter. Food is scarce, if provided at all, so migrant workers and their families go hungry and are expected to work regardless.
In many cases, migrant workers end up in forced labour where they are not being paid for the work they are doing and are physically threatened if they do not do it anyway. This may have happened because the contractor, who is actually a trafficker, has taken their salary in advance and not paid it to them, leaving the landowner or business owner the migrant labourers are working for demanding the work to be done and refusing to pay them for it, often threatening to abuse them if they refuse or try to leave.
This results in migrant workers trapped in a desperate situation where not only are they in danger, they are unable to earn, support their families or escape this exploitative cycle of bondage, often ending up in debt to their employer, too. Despite the illegality of such treatment, social stigma and lack of representation in society means that their abuse too often remains invisible.
Watch this video to hear Nandram’s story about his experience as a migrant labourer:
Increased Dangers for Female Migrant Workers
Because migrant workers are leaving their communities in search of employment opportunities, travelling long distances and sometimes crossing borders, they often have no guarantee of safe travel and where they will end up.
The risks that migrant workers face are severe, as we’ve discussed, with many people across South Asia ending up in desperately poor working and living situations and trapped in forced labour. This is particularly dangerous for women migrant workers because, without the guarantee of safe routes of travel and a clear destination, scouts can easily target female migrant workers and traffick them, often into dangerous sectors such as sex work or unfairly paid domestic work, sometimes even targeting their children along with them.
Adding to this, there are fewer employment opportunities for women in the most common daily wage sectors of agriculture and construction, leaving women and young children who have travelled long distances from their homes, and the safety of their communities, vulnerable to trafficking.
How Our Projects Are Supporting Migrant Workers
The scale of the challenges and dangers that migrant workers face across South Asia is vast. It takes a targeted, locally-led, and people-focused approach to bring about change that is sustainable and long-lasting. Our partner organisations in South Asia have various facilities set up to support migrant workers. These include:
- A 24-hour toll-free helpline dedicated to helping migrant workers access their rights
Many migrant workers don’t have access to their legal documents or understand their employee rights. When they call this helpline, they receive support from trained support workers who can provide guidance, offer help with their legal documents, and even liaise with local authorities to help them with their employment issues, get the police involved, and organise rescues when required.
- Migrant Resource Centres at key sites
These centres are established and run at key sites close to borders and areas where many migrant workers live or travel through. They provide resources to spread awareness so that people travelling in search of work learn more about the risks of migration and the prevalence of trafficking, as well as their rights and entitlements as citizens and workers. These centres provide safety and work to facilitate the safe movement of migrant labourers.
- Training is provided on women’s rights and legal aid
Extra focus is placed on ensuring that migrant workers are educated on women’s rights and the legal aid available to women survivors of abuse. This improves the equality and safety of women and reduces the risk of human trafficking and further abuse.
The work of our partners in South Asia focuses on the vision of ‘dignity for all’. This includes migrant workers, who are often too easily overlooked due to the ways in which they are exploited.
In India alone, the work of our partner organisation, Jan Sahas, has supported over 3 million migrant workers since 2020, with over 43,000 people directly benefitting from their services in 2022-23. The goal of the Jan Sahas project is to improve social protection for migrant workers, with a long-term vision to achieve social mobility for the communities it works with. This means enabling migrant workers to move away from relying on insecure daily wage work, supporting themselves instead with sustainable livelihoods within their local areas where they can benefit from safe, secure working conditions.
By providing access to education, ensuring that migrant workers are aware of their rights and the risks of migration, and ensuring they have access to benefits and other opportunities to earn a living, it is possible to put an end to the exploitation and abuse that migrant workers face.
The work that Karuna-supported projects do benefits the lives of communities across South Asia, helping to protect people from becoming trapped in dangerous cycles of forced labour, unfair pay, and debt.
We need your help to continue this vital work to end livelihood exploitation and protect migrant workers from abuse. Please donate to support our work today.
